Research Impact Tracking from Scholarly Blog Posts Expands with Partnership Between Plum™ Analytics and ACI Information Group

Posted: September 15, 2016

~ More than One Million Scholarly Blog Posts Now Part of the PlumX Suite Mentions ~

IPSWICH, Mass.— September 15, 2016—A new partnership between Plum™ Analytics, an EBSCO company and ACI Information Group will give PlumX Suite users access to metrics collected from the world’s only scholarly blog service. Scholarly blogs are increasingly part of the public discourse around research, and this partnership will allow researchers, librarians and funding organizations to see who is interacting with a piece of research and what they are saying in ACI’s collection of more than one million scholarly blog posts.

The partnership with ACI, the world’s leading aggregator of editorially selected and curated social media and blog publications, will showcase the importance of blogs in scholarly communications and reveal the alternative metrics of engagement, exposure and reach of bloggers. The PlumX Suite will be able to track more than 10,000 news and commentary blogs covering a variety of disciplines through its altmetrics category, Mentions. The ACI sources are adding to a curated list of more than 4,000 blogs that the PlumX Suite currently mines for mentions of research output.

Blog mentions are one of nine types of Mentions that are monitored in the PlumX Suite, joining resources such as comments on YouTube, reviews on Amazon and Wikipedia links. In addition to Mentions, there are four other categories of metrics — Usage, Captures, Social Media and Citations — that help research professionals tell the story of research.

PlumX is the definitive source of altmetrics data that is continually adding content sources to provide unrivaled depth and breadth of coverage. The ACI partnership is the latest expansion of PlumX altmetrics offerings, including tracking public and private Facebook conversations and usage data from Airiti e-Journals database from China and Taiwan. Plum Analytics also recently announced an agreement to build a joint Big Data Lab in China.

Plum Analytics Co-Founder and President, Andrea Michalek says the agreement continues the company’s commitment to providing altmetrics from all places that research information appears. “Plum Analytics is always enhancing its features to help professionals assess the impact of research. The addition of the scholarly blog information from ACI will give PlumX users an unparalleled amount of altmetrics information from the ever-expanding content source of blogs.”

Larry Schwartz, President of the ACI Information Group says the partnership showcases the importance of blogs in scholarly communications. “Our partnership with PlumX and EBSCO underscores the emerging importance of blogs in research and discovery and ACI’s focus on identifying the most authoritative blogs and credentialed bloggers worldwide.”

For more information about Plum Analytics and the PlumX Suite of products, please visit: www.plumanalytics.com.

About ACI Information Group
ACI Information Group (www.aci.info) is the world’s leading aggregator of editorially selected and curated social media and blog publications. With over 10,000 news and commentary blogs and more than one million scholarly blog posts in its Indices, ACI is revolutionizing the way people conduct research by enabling them to find the content they’ve been missing. Professionals, researchers, scholars, and students use the highly authoritative insights and analysis provided through ACI’s editorially selected collection of social media publications to find information that is unavailable in traditional media and journals. Publishers choose to include their content in the ACI Index to reach new audiences and bolster real-time scholarly communications and post-publication discourse.

About Plum™ Analytics
Plum Analytics is a pioneer in the field of altmetrics, revealing research interest and usage beyond traditional measures. The company helps individuals and organizations that use, fund, support, perform, publish or analyze research obtain a broad-spectrum view of interest and usage in research through both immediate and historical perspectives. Plum Analytics gathers metrics about research from dozens of scholarly sources, media channels and social media tools, and categorizes them into Usage, Captures, Mentions, Social Media and Citations. The complete PlumX Suite of five products delivers research output information based on the unique needs of each type of PlumX user. To learn more, visit http://www.plumanalytics.com.

About EBSCO Information Services
EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) is the leading discovery service provider for libraries worldwide with more than 8,000 discovery customers in over 100 countries. EBSCO Discovery Service™ (EDS) provides each institution with a comprehensive, single search box for its entire collection, offering unparalleled relevance ranking quality and extensive customization. EBSCO is also the preeminent provider of online research content for libraries, including hundreds of research databases, historical archives, point-of-care medical reference, and corporate learning tools serving millions of end users at tens of thousands of institutions. EBSCO is the leading provider of electronic journals & books for libraries, with subscription management for more than 360,000 serials, including more than 57,000 e-journals, as well as online access to more than 700,000 e-books. For more information, visit the EBSCO website at: www.ebsco.com. EBSCO Information Services is a division of EBSCO Industries Inc., a family owned company since 1944.